SF Art Book Fair 2017

The 2017 SF Art Book Fair is an annual multi-day festival of artists’ publications. The mission of the fair is to foster the unique art publishing community of the Bay Area while providing a platform for national and international publishers to exhibit their work to a new audience.

WHAT IS ART?

Googled “definition of art”: “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”

MY RENDITION ON “WHAT IS ART”

Clear constructed definitions are difficult to find, to define art is controversial. Here I go. Art to me is the sum result of a process. The genesis of art starts in the visual constructs of ones mind, then manifested into physical, interactive form. Art is a sentinel experience. Once art is created, it is stained by the subjective biases of the creator.

Art exemplifies the phenomenal of a paradox: simple complexity. Simple in the sense that art is the final form of a potentially complex process. For instance calligraphy, the art of 一 (one) is simple, but the process in producing this one physical stroke requires 1. the philosophical concept of “one” 2. volition or willpower to physically manifest that concept.

More could be said… I am not gonna go there… haha.

WHY IS ART BEAUTIFUL?

“Beauty in terms of art refers to an interaction between line, color, texture, sound, shape, motion, and size that is pleasing to the senses.”

“Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, taste, creation, and appreciation of beauty.”

-Boundless.com

MY INTERPRETATION ON BEAUTY

Simply, aesthetic beauty is the release of human intellect. Other words, high intelligence isn’t required to enjoy beauty in its multiple forms. At its core, aesthetic beauty is primitively subjective in nature. Two mind’s eyes staring at one sunset results in at its basic, two interpretations or more of the same phenomenal. Wasn’t it Russell who proposed that no one can share the same thought?

WHY IS ART AN IMPORTANT PART OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE?

Eh… Hard to find a Google search result for this question. I’ll try my best to answer this.

Art tells us about who we are. It physically represents the tension between what humanity yearns for – simplicity- yet what we perpetually cannot obtain since we are through nurture, complex beings.

It’s been said that art is the ultimate form of the highest peak of science. If science is the mundane grind of existing, art is the awareness of being alive and existing.

Art helps penetrate the experience of humans who are spiritual, duality creatures. Art is a signal or reminder of something other than itself. In art you find the intangible 喜怒哀乐 of human emotion, being, and experience.

On a simpler tone, art just makes the human experience much more enjoyable than it really is.